Editor in Chief, Joe Francica, spoke with Tomas Larsson, marketing director, Trimble Survey and Maarten Vandenbroucke, president, Gatewing, the provider of the X100 unmanned aerial vehicle about unmanned aerial systems (UAS) for an inside look at the applications and the equipment. Trimble recently bought Gatewing and listeners will find this interview especially useful as the market is set to rapidly expand.

With the impending merger of DigitalGlobe and GeoEye, Dr. Walkter Scott, Founder, Vice President and CTO, DigitalGlobe sat down with Editor in Chief Joe Francica to provide his views on where the company is headed, the budget situation in Washington and the technical advantages of the WorldView constellation.

This summer, the Arctic ice cap shrank--melted-to an all-time tiny size. Half what it was in 1980. The planet is changing. We explore. Guests: David Robinson, climatologist and professor in the department of geography at Rutgers University. Walt Meier, research scientist at the National Snow & Ice Data Center, which has been measuring the Arctic sea ice cover since 1979.

To understand many of the triumphs, tragedies and conflicts in the world, geopolitical analyst Robert Kaplan says to look no further than a map. In his book The Revenge Of Geography, Kaplan argues that geography is central to understanding the history and future of world affairs.

ProPublica investigative reporter Peter Maass says cellphone companies monitor where we are, who we call, what we buy -- and often provide it to law enforcement when requested. "They are collecting a heck of a lot more information than we expect them to be collecting about us," he tells Fresh Air.

The Documents that Changed the World podcast series is the brainchild of Joe Janes, a professor in the UW Information School. He uses the series to investigate the backstories and often evolving meaning of important historical documents, both famous and less known. ...This installment, however, was written and narrated by Andrew Brink, a former student of Janes’ and a 2012 graduate of the Information School. ...Janes said the John Snow map was a compelling topic because “it’s the Nineteenth Century version of big data; coalescing and condensing new and multiple streams of information — textual, numerical and observational — in ways they never had before, to make them far more useable.”

Bernie Szukalski, technology evangelist and senior product manager at Esri, introduces ArcGIS Online for Organization and helps potential users imagine how it might fit in their organizations.

National Public Radio's Scott Simon celebrates Gerardus Mercator.

WBUR (a Boston NPR station) host Anthony Brooks interviews Nathaniel Raymond, director of operations for the Satellite Sentinel Project, based at Harvard University’s Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. The project uses satellite imagery to follow the movement of military vehicles, rebel forces, or other activities that might be leading to an attack on civilian populations, in places like Sudan, and most recently, Syria.

On the ground, Tropical Storm Irene floodwaters devastated Vermont's communities, cutting off roads and washing away homes and businesses. Now with a digital bird's-eye-view, the world can see the dramatic statewide extent of Tropical Storm Irene's damage to Vermont's landscape. Google has just updated its maps for Vermont with post-Irene satellite imagery. VPR's Mitch Wertlieb turned to two professors at St. Michael's College, Geography Professor Richard Kujawa and Environmental Studies Professor Laura Stroup to tell us the value of having these images at our digital fingertips.